the essential
Appearing in the last century with the development of the agri-food industry and the arrival of pre-packaged products, mobile grocery stores, which had almost disappeared in favor of mass distribution, are once again hitting the countryside.
It’s not yet a successful business, financially. The new nomadic grocers are unanimous, human contact remains one of the main dimensions of their activity. An offer from yesteryear brought up to date by the Covid-19 health crisis and the inevitable depopulation of isolated villages. As everywhere in France, in Aude and the Pyrénées-Orientales, two out of three villages have not had food stores for a very long time. The majority lowered the curtain in the 1970s and the advent of increasingly gigantic supermarkets and commercial spaces.
Fortunately, aboard their shop van, a few die-hard itinerants, who previously announced their arrival with horns intended to bring the populations together, resisted. Until finding a replacement. Young people or their elders driven by peasant common sense, ecological awareness and the desire to spread quality regional or organic products up and down the valleys.
In any case, this is the wish of two locals, Rui Viana and Delphine Béteille who have each tried the adventure and are full of ideas to perpetuate the future of their store on wheels. And supply as many deserted rural areas as possible. History of “give meaning back to my life” for one and “out of a passion for food and relationships” for the other, ils thus roam the hamlets at the wheel of their busy van, bringing back lost flavors to the inhabitants of the most distant corners of the Catalan and Aude countries.
